GST collection Banks

At present Central Government and each State Finance Department prescribes banking arrangements for collection of government taxes. At present, Central and State governments utilize the services of Public Sector Banks/ Other Public Sector Banks (IDBI)/ Private Sector Banks (ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank) for tax collection. The committee was informed that Non-Scheduled and Cooperative banks operating in State(s) are not permitted to collect taxes.

The list of all authorized banks participating in the GSTN should be common across all states. This can be a super set consisting of existing authorized banks of the Central Government and all State Governments and Union Territories. A list of banks that have been presently authorized either by the Centre or State Tax Authorities has been provided by RBI and the same is enclosed as Annexure-VI. It is recommended that all these banks may be considered for authorization in the GST regime in consultation with the Department of Financial Services.

Only those banks should be accredited who refine their IT systems to handle GST remittances in a seamless manner obviating need for manual intervention for data entry, funds flow and exchange of data.

It is also noted that a participating bank in the current context has limited mandate for tax receipts as compared to that of an authorized bank. The mandate of participating banks, though essentially agents of RBI, is limited to acceptance of tax receipts through internet banking mode only. Whereas, authorized banks have a broader mandate of accepting government receipts through both internet banking mode and physical mode (OTC) of Cash, DD and Cheques, in addition to mandate of making government payments. In order to give a broader choice to the tax payers, and hence to enhance ease of doing business, it is recommended that the participating banks can also be allowed to accept GST receipts through OTC mode envisaged in this report.

Out of the superset of existing authorized banks and participating banks only those banks should be authorized to accept GST receipts who meet the minimum requirements suggested below. The objective of these minimum requirements is to ensure that a bank has the capability to handle GST receipts in a seamless manner in a consistent and error free manner underpinned by a robust IT system with no process flow discontinuities.